Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Harvard, Higher Education & the Addiction to Federal Funding 4-8-25
Tue, 08 Apr 2025
In this episode, Scott Becker discusses Harvard’s potential $9 billion loss in federal funding, questioning how elite universities became so reliant on government money despite massive endowments
Chapter 1: Who is Scott Becker and what is today's discussion about?
This is Scott Becker with the Becker Private Equity and Business Podcast. Today's discussion is Harvard, higher education, and the addiction to the federal government. So here's the deal with what's happened with some of our elite academic institutions. And again, I say this with
Chapter 2: What is Harvard's potential loss in federal funding?
all sort of balance, I think, because I'm actually a Harvard Law graduate and enjoyed the relationships in the network and the education immensely. But here's the discussion today. So the concept today is Harvard is concerned that it's going to lose about $9 billion in federal funding. And I don't know how many years this is over, but this is a – Crazy number.
Chapter 3: How large is Harvard's endowment compared to the lost federal funding?
Harvard is an institution with the last I looked, the largest endowments in the country at $40 to $50 billion in their endowment and probably a lot more. I haven't looked at it in some time. They're going to lose about $9 billion in federal funding over the next several years. I don't know how many years. An amazing, amazing number, astronomical.
Chapter 4: Why is Harvard taking a loan despite a massive endowment?
And they are then going to take out a loan from a bank $750 million for operating costs when they're sitting in an endowment of $40 to $50 billion. And this whole thing, it shocks me in terms of how perverse the funding of higher education became that schools were getting this kind of money.
I was blown away originally when I saw that between, I think it was Hopkins and Columbia, they were getting $1.2 billion.
now when i see this number of 9 billion for harvard i i am truly sort of aghast that there's this addiction between our higher education institutions and the federal government funding it's also this crazy inability to watch budgets at these institutions is also led to why so many of them took so much funds
from places like Qatar and allowed different influences to become a big play in these institutions. But again, the note I saw today was Harvard, and this is summarized by Bloomberg, that it's preparing for potential funding losses, including $9 billion in grants and contracts due to the Trump administration's scrutiny of colleges. $9 billion in grants and contracts. That's simply outrageous.
They'll end up, they're trying to borrow $750 million to try and stave off some of these threats of federal funding challenges. But that's literally a, that's a crazy, crazy amount of money. In any event, Thank you for listening to the Becker Private Equity and Business Podcast. I'd love your thoughts on this. I know some people hate whatever the Trump administration does.
I'm not one of those people. I just can't get over the fact that these institutions are getting this amount of money from the federal government. Simply incredible. Thank you for listening to the Becker Private Equity and Business Podcast. Thank you very much.
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